I found the original Spheretta-5,7 while looking for "dotty" fonts, to make sure that the font I'm doodling at the moment will look a little different from others on FontStruct. I liked Spheretta and as cloning was allowed by the creator I made some changes as Meek's many innovations enrich our creative thinking **smile** The original font was created in 2011 by arseniiv.
I smoothed the circle, worked into existing glyphs where I thought 'necessary' (nudges, ~re~moved some dots in glyphs or added dots to reduce some gaps).
Comparing parent and clone: changes are a smoother circle, a few symbols, the Lower Case for Basic Latin and most Latin1 positions, some operators/symbols are available with as well as without the UC circle. And that I have broken the 5x7 rule in some glyphs to improve their lines.
In the LC glyph style (no circle) you have: full stop, comma, all quotation marks on Basic Latin and Latin1, apostrophe, asterisk, plus, minus, solidus, colon, semicolon, percentage, less, more.
The low line is a blank circle; decorative dot arrangements inside a circle are on the tilde, left square bracket, grave accent.
The original (with a circle) can be found here: the "?" is on "{", the "!" on "}", the "-" on "reverse solidus, the "=" on "]"
I've added arseniiv's name and this parent-Fontstruction's year of creation on the first letter of the ""Even More Latin"" band, then added mine on the second letter on the same band. Feel free to add more glyphs (and your name and creation year, following ours), arseniiv allowed cloning so that we can add to his work. I follow his idea; and like him I, too, can't find enough time to continue working on Spheretta-5,7 for the next months. It would be great to see Spheretta-5,7 grow some more ...
This is a cloneSomething that I made. Part of the Roto Family.
Currently supports:
English, Jamaican, Irish, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, Finnish, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Sami (Northern), Hungarian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Esperanto
Update Log
Current version:v3.0
v0.1: Basic characters.
v0.2: Added basic punctuation.
v0.3: Added more punctuation.
v0.4: Changed letters S, s, Q.
v0.5: Added ^ and ` .
v1.0: Smoother curves, changed letters S, s, Q, R, r, K, k.
v1.1: Added Á, À, Â, Å, Ä, Æ.
v1.2: Added Ç, È, É, Ê, Ë, Ì, Í, Î, Ï, Ð.
v1.3: Added Ñ, Ò, Ó, Ô, Õ, Ö, ×, Ø.
v1.4: Added Ù, Ú, Û, Ü, Ý, Ÿ, Þ, ß.
v1.5: Added à, á, â, ã, ä, å, æ.
v1.6: Added ç, è, é, ê, ë, ì, í, î, ï.
v1.7: Added ð, ñ, ò, ó, ô, õ, ö, ÷, ø.
v1.8: Added ù, ú, û, ü, ý, þ, ÿ.
v2.0: Added Ā, ā, Ă, ă, Ą, ą.
v2.1: Added Ć, ć, Ĉ, ĉ, Ċ, ċ, Č, č.
v2.2: Added Ď, ď, Đ, đ, Ē, ē, Ĕ, ĕ, Ė, ė.
v2.3: Added Ę, ę, Ě, ě, Ĝ, ĝ, Ğ, ğ, Ġ, ġ, Ģ, ģ.
v2.4: Added Ĥ, ĥ, Ħ, ħ, Ĩ, ĩ, Ī, ī, Ĭ, ĭ.
v2.5: Added Į, į, İ, ı, IJ, ij.
v2.6: Added Ĵ, ĵ, Ķ, ķ, ĸ, Ĺ, Ļ, ļ.
v2.7: Added Ņ, ņ, Ň, ʼn, Ŋ, ŋ, Ō, ō, Ŏ, ŏ.
v2.8: Added Ő, ő, Œ, œ, Ŕ, ŕ, Ŗ, ŗ, Ř, ř.
v2.9: Added Ś, ś, Ŝ, ŝ, Ş, ş, Š, š, Ţ, ţ, Ť, ť, Ŧ, ŧ.
v2.10: Completed Latin Extended-A.
v3.0: Started Latin Extended-B.
What began nearly 8 years ago as an experiment in multi-stage, multi-resolution pixel serif type drafting (starting smallish then manually upscaling x4), took on the robust character you see here after countless edits and some tricky lessons learned along the way.
The initial weight was on the light side (cloned privately for posterity), so I took a leap into this bookish weight by fattening each glyph copy-pasted 1 pixel shifted both up and to the right. A rudimentary technique, by no means novel, yet almost wholly effective. I saw fit from here to only make a handful of corrections, keeping the slightly rounded and slanted serif shape that resulted as well as the subtle reenforcing of a pen-nib construction.
More intriguing is the 1-bit “anti-aliasing” scheme I found myself progressively guided toward while finding the lines of these curves developing the initial light weight. Implied diagonals and said curves – as well as refinement of contrast – are substantially more granular and specific than had I taken a black-and-white posterized, or stairstepped approach.
At half-resolution, the resulting smoothness is acceptible. This type of hinting will be useful in developing a substitution rule set consisting of subpixel slanted or curved bricks to produce a “vectorized” version.
Indeed, such a process could be purely automated by a proficient developer or properly trained neural network (this would be a really interesting future feature for fontstruct pro – rather than hinting a font after painstaking vector construction, why not reverse the process by way of en vogue ai-assisted upscaling?).
Basic accented charaters and numerals are being added as I churn through the extended character set...